A scored tablet, which is divided by a pharmacist or a patient depending on a dose, optimizes dose control, and improves flexibility upon prescription (For example, see Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. H09-104619, U.S. Pat. No. 5,520,929). It is difficult, however, to always divide a tablet equally, in which a drug is dispersed homogenously over the entire tablet, only by providing a scored line, and errors of dose pose a problem. When a healthy individual divides such a conventional scored tablet accurately by an accurate procedure, any of the fragments contains an accurate amount of a drug. No method has been devised, however, to reduce human errors that occur when patients with various diseases and medical staff handle these conventional scored tablets, under various environment of actual medical practice.
In addition, scored tablets in which a plurality of cores containing an active ingredient are disposed, so-called dry-coated tablets, have been known for accurate dose division (see, for example, WO2003/026560; WO2003/051339; and Pharmaceutical Research, Vol. 21, No. 7, July 2004, p 1177-1183).
Since the manufacturing process of dry-coated tablets is complicated to lead to a large loss and the manufacturing speed may not be increased, there has been a problem that the manufacturing cost becomes high.
These dry-coated tablets in that part of or whole core is embedded in an outer layer differ from those of the present invention which does not require an outer layer.
At the same time, some active ingredients of pharmaceutical preparations have unpleasant odor and/or taste depending on their type, and film coating is sometimes applied to mask them (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. H08-53345). Further, film coating may be applied to stabilize active ingredients that are unstable to light, water, moisture, or body components such as gastric fluid with which the active ingredients come into contact after taken. Moreover, tablets film-coated to impart a specific function, such as to secure enteric dissolution. However, these functional preparations have a problem of losing the functions by division.
Further, although it is frequently convenient for patients that one tablet contains a plurality of drugs, but some drugs have poor compatibility with others so that they may not be made into a combined drug.